This is our week to begin this period of waiting and watching.

This period is where we look for what new thing is God doing in this world. How is God breaking into our world today? What hope, peace, love, and joy is God bringing?

The thing I was sitting with was this idea of what are we longing for right now? And as I was writing this sermon, my dog came up and pestered me. I thought, I know what she wants. She wants fewer people. It’s been a busy week. She wants fewer people in the house, fewer dogs in the house, and a little bit less noise. Let’s go back to normal, right? Let’s have that normal life again, that simpler life.

But the reality of normal is that we’re using those rose-colored glasses. What we think is normal is more of a dream that probably never existed anyway. We paint everything and smooth out all the edges so that we only remember the good parts and forget all the hard parts. But life is hard. That’s a reality.

We need to remember that the point of coming together is so that we support one another in all of the hard stuff. It can be nice to support one another in the fun stuff and the good stuff. We all like that. But we need one another in the hard stuff and when life gets real.

So, I was thinking about, based on our vision and mission, what are we longing for?

What came to me was compassionate care for creation. Our scripture today (Luke 2:1-3 & Romans 8:18-25) is about creation, and we’re looking to give that compassionate care and to share that with one another, with the world, and with our community.

To try to be there for one another. What does that look like? Well, back in early November, I read this article by Guy Sayles, who is a pastor in Western North Carolina. He wrote about the experience of Hurricane Helene, where the mountains of North Carolina never experienced anything like that before.

What he talked about first was a quote from Mr. Rogers that Mr. Roger’s mother always told him when things were going wrong, “Look for the helpers. There are always helpers.”

Who are the helpers and what are they doing? He started looking around at what was happening in his community, which was devastated. Hurricane Helene was a leveler or an equalizer of sorts. I don’t mean that in a good way. But, it brought the helpers. It brought the religious and the other non-profit volunteers to help. It brought FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers. It brought the North Carolina National Guard and the state and local agencies.

But more than that. It brought neighbors out to help one another. A woman who had rain barrels started tapping off the water so that people had water to flush their toilets. Another neighbor who had a generator put it in their driveway and set it up as a charging station so everybody could come and charge their phones or other devices. Neighbors who had freezers that no longer had electricity started handing out the food because it was going to thaw and go bad.

Guy said people would sit around the generator as their devices were charging and they got to know one another. They learned to trust one another. They became a community. They gave each other hope in the middle of this disaster. They were there for each other. That’s where our hope can come from.

So today we have this letter from Paul.

If you are a regular attendee, you know that I struggle with Paul because he has this circular logic that he uses and you can get very confused. But before I get to that, I do want to talk about the fact that this is Paul’s letter to the Christians in Rome. I usually say to the churches in Rome, and I’m afraid that I might be misrepresenting that to you. They didn’t have cathedrals and the Vatican didn’t exist, this was before that.

At the time of Paul’s letters people were gathered in homes and they were of all ages and all economic groups. They were the merchants, the slaves, and even the destitute. They all came together, just like in Acts. They talk about everyone came together and shared as there was need. Kind of like that story about the hurricane. Same idea. These communities would come together and the message of Jesus’s love, the available salvation, and this equalizing love. Everybody was included. It was this inclusiveness that attracted the people and the reason Christianity grew.

So to them, Paul is saying the difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. Some of us know what it’s like to be pregnant. It’s uncomfortable and it’s challenging, but it’s not only around us, it’s within us. I think right now, when I look at the world and I look at us, we want something new. We want something new to come out. We want more justice for people. Not less. We want more inclusivity. We want more freedom, not less. We want more liberty, not less.

Imagine a pregnant person, how we get larger. We, of course, don’t see what is enlarging us, but that is our hope. That is this thing that God is building among us. But, the longer we wait, the larger we become and the more joyful our expectancy. So something is coming. A real justice with peace that we don’t know what that looks like yet.

But it’s going to be hard to get there. It’s going to involve pain and it’s going to mean that we have to come together and work together to survive it.

As I was walking the dogs yesterday morning, another dog walker had lost his gentle leader.

So this morning I brought him a gentle leader and handed it to him. He said I feel like other dog owners are supporting me. And I said, well, isn’t that what we’re supposed to do? That’s being community. I have something that I no longer need and you need it. Why would I not give it to you? I don’t need anything. You don’t need to buy it from me. I can just give it to you.

Our materialistic consumeristic culture starts to program us where we think that we have to pay for everything and we think that if we own it then it’s worth something and we ought to get something for it. Maybe we can just share this idea of justice.

So do we really long for a better world? Do we really want to figure out more of what this hope that’s coming is about?

Advent is a reflective season where we’re called to think. It’s not by chance that this hits in December as the trees have now let go of their leaves. They’re going into this dormant time. The nights are getting longer. We’re to rest more and take more time to slow down.

And what do we do instead? Fill everything with lights, loud music, and bright colors as we try to ward off the darkness. But if we can accept some of the darkness, we can light a candle. We don’t have to be in the pitch dark, but if we can take the time to stop and to give thanks to God, then to think, to reflect on our days.

Where was I merciful? Where was I loving and where did I fail? Because we all have those moments that aren’t our best.

It’s good for us to think about these and then to listen to our hearts because that’s where the still small voice of God is speaking. That’s where Christ meets us, in the quiet and the listening.

Can we give ourselves some time to do that? To listen deeply for what Christ is calling us to hope and long for. Then watch and wait with patience.

May it be so. Amen.

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I thought it was worth noting, that this is a very different scripture than what we have been studying the past two weeks.

We were looking at scriptures coming out of the Gospel of Matthew, and our scripture today (Galatians 3:23-29) from Paul. This was actually written prior to Matthew’s gospel, and it was written to a very specific group of people.

Just as we talked about the context of Matthew’s gospel, it’s important to understand the context of this letter to the churches in Galatia. This was written probably around 48 to 50 AD. It is coming out of Paul’s experience, knowledge and understanding of what it means to be a Christian.

Christian. They didn’t quite have that concept yet. That word wouldn’t have been in their speech yet, but that’s what they were trying to do. They were trying to figure out how do we now live as followers of Jesus. And they had within them both Jews and Greeks or Gentiles, people who were not Jewish.

Unfortunately, Paul feels someone came and told them that those who were not raised Jewish and were not following Jewish law weren’t fully part of the body unless they chose to do so. They had to follow all the Jewish laws or they weren’t really accepted. Paul does not believe that, so Paul challenges that thinking saying, “once you are a member, a follower of Jesus, you belong. We don’t have different categories. This is not separate, but equal. This is together.”

In fact, that is what made the church of the first century different than the community.

Because the community had divisions. There was the class system, there were many ways in which people were divided, but when they came to church, they were equal. Most specifically, around the table because, in other scriptures, Paul reminds people the rich had the ability to get to the table first. Paul says, “wait a minute, you don’t get to eat until everybody comes to the table.” Because, the rich would eat, they would eat the communion. Then, when the poor people got there, there wasn’t anything left. That’s not how the church is meant to be. That’s why when we have communion, everybody comes together and we do it together.

Galatians 3:23-29 is a really important scripture for those first churches.

It’s a scripture of inclusivity. It’s saying you don’t have to follow the Jewish law. The Jewish law was our initial teacher, but now Jesus Christ is our teacher and that’s who we’re going to follow.

That is part of our vision and part of our mission to be an inclusive and generous body to welcome all people. You don’t have to prove your worthiness based on following certain laws. Paul says it’s about all of us coming together and showing the rest of the world, how we can be one body, how we can cooperate with our differences, how we can work things out together because of the faith that we have in Christ Jesus.

It is not about us being able to do any of this on our own. It is about what God does. God is the one who brings us together and will help us work through our differences so that we know the right thing to do together.

That whole idea of being heirs of Abraham. That meant because Abraham was, God gave Abraham land, God promised that humanity will continue and God gave them Identity. That’s our promise that we will have a place to be, that we will be a people that we will continue, and that we will have this special name which now we know as Christian.

I want to read this scripture again for you. I’m going to read it out of the contemporary English version because it sounds just a little bit different and maybe you’ll hear something that you didn’t hear before.

“The law controlled us and kept us under its power until the time came when we would have faith. In fact, the law was to be our teacher until Christ came. Then we would have faith and be acceptable to God. But once a person has learned to have faith, There is no need to have the law as a teacher. All of you are God’s children because of your faith in Christ Jesus. And when you were baptized, it was as though you had put on Christ in the same way you put on new clothing. Faith in Christ Jesus is what makes each of you equal with each other, whether you are Jew or Greek, slave or free person, man or woman. So if you belong to Christ, you are now part of Abraham’s family, and you will be given what God has promised.” – Galatians 3:23-29

May it be so. Amen.

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As I was preparing this sermon, this question came up. What are we doing here?

I love this question. I love when you can emphasize different words and it changes the intent just a little bit. I hope you heard that as I went through that list. That was intentional. But I also want you to pause and think about that question. We’re going to come back to it at the end so you have some time.

Although this question does not appear in the scriptures, I think it is a question that would have been within the Israelites and Moses in the wilderness who received the Ten Commandments.

The Israelites in the wilderness, they were the same people that were complaining because there was no food and they were complaining because there was no water. Asking, what are we doing here?

I also think it was a question that could have been on the minds of the disciples when Jesus walks into the temple and creates a scene. What are we doing here? What is going on? This is not the Jesus we’ve just been with everywhere else. So what is different?

I think the answer is in context. Context matters. So I’m going to give you some context for around this.

The way my brain works, I went to Paul’s scripture in 1 Corinthians. “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you?” – 1 Corinthians 6:19. Now you might be wondering, how in the world did she get to Paul? Well, it’s this idea of being a body as a temple that we hear Jesus talk about; and you’re going, yeah, but this is Paul.

Well, there’s two things to remember when you read the Bible. One is that none of this was written down by a journalist making a news story. It was all written later. The second thing is that they’re not put together in chronological order either. They’re not put together to tell a story about God’s interaction with humanity. But they’re not put together in a way that it actually happened.

Paul’s writing of 1 Corinthians is actually older than the Gospels. Paul wrote this in 54 A.D, and the first Gospel written was Mark in about 70 A.D. This is also significant because in 70 A.D, the Roman Empire desecrated or raised the temple of Jerusalem, so that there was no more temple. Which created this issue again for the people. If there is no temple, where is God? Because they had been teaching throughout the whole Bible that God is in the temple. Even with the Israelites that had received the Ten Commandments, God is with the Ark of the Covenant.

The Ark of the Covenant is in the temple. It’s in the holy of Holies. That’s where God is, supposedly.

This idea of our body as a spirit, our body as a temple is playing out in our society right now. Evangelicals hold this up as one of their very important scriptures, that our body is a temple. I learned that when I was an evangelical for a bit during college.

We have something to learn about that. We don’t think about and we don’t talk about how our body is a temple for God. We could. We could get better at that. But they (Evangelicals) believe that and so they want to create laws that control what we do with our bodies. That’s why I stepped over.

So think about that and where we are in today’s society. That’s what’s going on.

Now, back over where Jesus is going to say his body is a temple for God in the scripture.

That’s significant. We need to know about where is God? Jesus’s answer is, he is the temple. He doesn’t come right out and say that. That’s what John’s message is. John’s writing in the 80s and 90s, so he’s writing much later.

Have I totally confused you by now? What I want you to notice is that there’s two things that are different about this version of Jesus cleansing the temple. This version, this story, is in all four Gospels. In the three synoptic Gospels; Matthew, Mark, & Luke. Mark would have been written first. Matthew and Luke used Mark to write their version. Jesus comes in, upsets everything, and says, “Don’t make my father’s house a marketplace. It’s a house of prayer.”

It’s not what he said in John. John changes it in two ways. One way, in John he brings a whip of cords that would be made out of leather. He does not, there’s no mention of that in the others. And he goes on to talk about taking down the temple and raising it in three days.

So in John’s gospel, John is giving us what they call a foreshadowing of what’s going to happen to Jesus. I think the whip is a foreshadowing of the beating that Jesus gets. Although I think it’s very important to remember that when we read John’s version of this, even though it says he made a whip, and took it, it does not talk about him hurting anyone. It says that the animals left, the animals moved, so there was a scare factor, or a fear. But it doesn’t say anything about any animals or humans being hurt. Which is very different from Jesus’ experience later with the Romans. The other piece is this idea of, I’m going to raise the temple in three days. What’s Jesus’ issue with the temple?

I’ve had members of this congregation look at me and say we can’t sell things in the narthex or we are making this house of prayer into a marketplace.

That’s not an accurate reading of this because context matters. They were selling things and it was expected that they would be selling things. Especially because Passover’s coming. A month before Passover to 26 days after Passover, Jews were expected to go to the temple and pay their temple tax. Now, most people carried Roman money, which had on the face of it, Caesar’s head and the inscription, Augustus Caesar, son of God, because that’s who Caesar thought he was,

That would have been creating another god besides the true God. So one had to change their money, and they came from all over so they could have also had other money. But they had to change it for temple currency because the temple only received temple currency which did not have an engraving image on it and no other son of God. There was only one, the one true God.

The money changers were always there during this time of year and there were always animals being sold there. Because, again, the laws were that you needed an animal that was pure. You didn’t want to bring one from home that could have been raised by your pagan neighbor. You went to the temple and you brought your animal for sacrifice and you knew it was already clean. All of this was normal.

What wasn’t normal was the fact that the temple had already been desecrated by Herod.

At this point, Herod had put engraved images on the temple. He had done things to desecrate it.

Jesus’s point is God’s not really in here anyway. The God you’re looking for was with John in the Jordan and is with me. That’s John’s version. Remember John has a very different Christ, too. John has put this at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry.

Normally, Matthew, Mark and Luke put this, when Jesus enters Jerusalem after the fanfare of the palms and we know where he’s going. He knows he’s headed for a confrontation with the chief priest.

But here in the second chapter, all he’s done was gone through the baptism, the wilderness, and he just changed. The thing he just did was gone to a wedding with his mother. Where his mother convinced him to make water into wine. Putting it all out there. Right up front. Come on, honey. Just, just give him some more wine. Just one little miracle here.

I talk about John’s Jesus as being large and in charge. This is the Jesus that gives us all the I am sayings. Which we don’t see in the other gospels.

This Jesus comes to make a point. His point is, you’re doing it all wrong.

Here in the temple. You’ve missed it. You didn’t understand what John was doing in the desert, and now I’ve come, and I am.

So, what are you doing here? What are we doing here? Why do we come together?

Our house isn’t big enough for everybody. Isn’t that wonderful? Because this is the biggest space we’ve got forever to welcome everybody in. Because we want to have a table that’s big enough for everyone.

I love the fact that we do Intinction or even when we did Pew Communion, because everybody gets served. The table is bigger than this. If we all came up and just stood around this, not everybody would be at the table. Our point is, there’s always room at the table. Because everybody’s invited to the table.

Well, here’s how I saw it going. I wonder if we come, because it’s the crowd in this scripture that asks Jesus for a sign. Now that’s a theme in John’s gospel too, that they keep asking for signs. There are signs throughout John’s gospel of who Jesus is. But the people want a sign. I think we want a sign too.

I think we are looking, we come because we want to sign that this is true. That this Jesus is worthy of our devotion. He’s worthy of following. That he has the answers we seek.

I think we come looking for answers. I think that we want to sign that in the midst of all of our fears, God’s got this. That there is something there. God is working for good in the world, even though when we read the news, it’s not there.

I think we come looking to hear that in spite of our frailties and our failures, we are still loved and forgiven. We need to be reminded of that, because the world does not make us feel loved and forgiven.

We come together to remind each other to remember together and to invite others in because I am here to say…

“We are loved and forgiven.”

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